Peter had been raised a good Jew, taught the law from a little child. Paul knew what was right and wrong, what was good and what was evil. He knew what animals were good to eat and what animals were evil to eat. He also knew to never eat with Gentiles, and that was wrong.
But all of that came from the wrong tree. God’s plan was to use Peter to take the gospel beyond the Jewish people and bring life to the nations. He needed Peter to flow from the Tree of Life and not judge people based on what he thought was right and wrong.
To change the Tree Peter was living from, God had to get so serious He knocked Peter into a trance. It is very rare God uses a trance to get hold of someone, but this matter is so serious and so intense, God had to get through to Peter.
In the trance God shows Peter all the different animals and said that Peter can eat them all. Peter argued with God. He told God he doesn’t eat unclean food. Even though this was a trance, God still had to tell Peter three times before He stopped arguing.
Can you imagine arguing with God in a trance that you know what is right and wrong more than He does? That is the result of living at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil – you think you are more righteous than God and more loving than Jesus! We all need to come to the Tree of Life or we will be lost in delusions of how pious we are!
When discussing ministers that managed to avoid eating at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, who managed to constantly submit to God and trust God, we have to at some point look at Paul.
Even at the end of his life, with deeper revelations than we can dream of, he did not rely on his knowledge, he relied on God. Now when you are relying only on God, what you do will seem strange to those who rely on knowledge, especially natural knowledge.
But we have to learn to rely on God, not a pattern or formula. God is not a pattern, He is not a robot, He is a person and He knows more than you. Imagine if I tried to run a conference the way it went last time, that’s eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. No! I have to get on my knees and ask the Lord each year how the conference should go.
Paul did not just do what seemed right, He got His information fresh from the Lord. Most of us just as our ministry was taking off would see going to jail as a misstep, as a demonic frustration. Not Paul. In Acts 21, the prophet Agabus tells Paul if you go to Jerusalem you are going to jail. I get the impression the prophet thought the best idea was to therefore avoid Jerusalem, but Paul said “I am ready to be bound, I am ready to die”. Most of us would rely on the Tree of Knowledge and go prison is bad, not being able to travel and minister is evil, being with prisoners is not good. Most of us would think travelling, doing crusades and planting churches is good and not doing that is evil. But God stepped above that.
But Paul went to the Tree of Life, and found out jail was God’s plan. It wasn’t for the last few years but it is now. No programme or formula can get you to this place. No Bible College can put it in you. No one can tell you this. No prophet can see it for you. You must develop a fresh, daily, strong relationship with the Lord.
Paul went to the mission field in Jerusalem, and he wasn’t deciding between the Hilton and the Marriot, he was heading to jail, and he still went. He was totally dependent on God.
Now, Paul’s greatest legacy is without a doubt his letters. The New Testament contains fourteen letters from Paul. At least ten of these letters were written while Paul was in prison. God had a plan for Paul that turned the ashes of prison into beauty. No prophet saw it, there’s no how to write a best seller guide that starts with “get arrested”, but Paul wrote ten of the most important letters ever penned in all of history while in prison. To get there he only had one choice… Rely on God.
We have to realize God’s wisdom is far higher than the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. God’s plan for your life might cause you to move somewhere else than the happening places of our day, but maybe God doesn’t want another church in Colorado Springs and has a place for you to shine you can’t even dream of.
Learn to rely on God. Be ready to suffer and die. Be ready to do anything. Then you will end up in your destiny. Follow a formula will make you formulaic… Trite, jaded, a pale echo of what you should be. Don’t go to the wrong tree.
All of us need to come to a place where we rely on God above what the world would call good and evil. For Abraham, that day came when God said to him “Take your son, your only son Isaac, who you love, and go the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering” (Genesis 22.2). The Lord asked him to take HIS SON as a BURNT OFFERING.
Go on, do a poll of the world – your office, your classroom, your friends and family – is it evil to kill your own son by setting fire to him? I guarantee the world will say this is evil. But Abraham relied on God, ate from the Tree of Life and did not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. And because of that submission, the blessing that comes on our lives is forever called the blessing of Abraham, Abraham is the father of our faith, and Abraham’s people were multiplied forever.
Why did God decide to bless Abraham, and multiply his seed like the stars of heaven (Genesis 22.16)? Was it because Abraham studied well at school, got into a good university, got a good job and went to a nice church (when he was able and not too busy of course)? By the way, it also was not because Abraham agreed with murder. It goes beyond that – it was because Abraham was more committed to God and honouring God than what anyone thought of him, even what he thought of him. What God said, He did.
Do you want to be on fire for God? We had a prophetic word on Sunday in Dagenham from Libby Nahimana that we would be a group of firestarters? Do you want to be a firestarter? Do you want to burn for the Lord? Then do not depend on what you know and depend on God.
For Joshua that moment came when he had to offer Jericho as a burnt offering to the Lord. Joshua “utterly destroyed” the whole city – man and woman, young, old, oxen, sheep and donkeys! (Joshua 6.21). Joshua had to not decide whether that was right for himself, he had to obey God. You do not want to disobey God and walk another way because you think you know better than God.
For Hosea, one day the Lord told him to marry a prostitute. Can you imagine how many of your friends would say it was right to marry a prostitute? People would think you were evil. How many pastors would tell a young single man on fire for God to marry a prostitute? It’s not good – the tree of knowledge of good and evil would say that is not good, don’t do it.
Now, don’t read this blog and go and marry a prostitute, don’t read this blog and go and burn your son, don’t read this blog and go and wipe out an evil city – read this blog and get on your knees and ask God what you should do.
My son Reuben dropped out of university and even I thought that was crazy, but he was eating at the tree of life, and relying on God not what other people thought was right. Other people still think he should have another “good” life but he has led over 100,000 people to the Lord in the last couple of years. To live like that, you have to rely on God and be constantly praying and reading the Word so you are guided by God, not traditions, not philosophy, not other people’s opinions, not society, not anything!
What about Saul? He was told by the prophet not to sacrifice to the Lord. How many of you know that sacrificing to the Lord is a good thing? Worshipping the Lord is a good thing? I have found in my life knowing a good thing to do, but not doing it is very hard. There are times I am in a room or situation and I know how to flow in the Holy Spirit and how to change the whole atmosphere of a room and the Lord has instructed me to stand still. That’s hard. Saul failed that test, and offered a burnt offering, and God said to Saul that what he did was foolish (1 Sam. 13.12-13). In a similar way, David was told not to build the temple for the Lord. David kept close to God because he listened to God over listening to his desires and plans.
There have been times in a prayer line God has told me not to pray for certain people. I find that hard, but I listen to God. My son was healed because a minister was told by God not to pray for him. I was offended at the time, but later found out how important it was that I was the one who prayed for him, not the minister. We must not show mercy where God is not showing that mercy!
Recently God told me not to take someone back into Tree of Life even if they came to me and said they had repented. Listen – God knows more than me. I will not rely on me, I will not rely on my assessment of what is good and evil, I will rely on the Lord.
I am not eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, I am following the Tree of Life, the Living God.
My next post will look at the man who lived in the light of the Tree of Life and not the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil more than anyone else besides Jesus – Paul, the apostle.
In our first post on this topic, we looked at the fact that eating at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is making decisions based on what you think is good and evil without relying on God or building a relationship with Him based on submission and dependence.
Now I want you to think about Jesus, Jesus lived the perfect life, a life of abundance, a life where “the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do, those things He does” (John 5.19). Now when you live like that, your opposition will be similar to Jesus.
The people who came against Jesus Christ were not the wicked sinners who only did evil. No – the people who opposed Jesus and His ministry were the most successful religious leaders of their generation! Let me put it in a way that every pastor will understand: everyone who persecuted Jesus was a tither!
Everyone who persecuted Jesus tithed, fasted twice a week, prayed, and had an intense zeal for God. If you are a pastor, you would have loved to have them in your church. They were on fire, and did it all. But they ate from the fruit of their actions, their decisions, their commitment, their zeal and their works and therefore had no place in their life for the Lord Jesus Christ.
It wasn’t prostitutes and tax collectors betraying Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. It wasn’t thieves yelling “Crucify Him!”. It was people who had memorized Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy but could not recognize Jesus.
The religious leaders, the pastors of their day, the bishops of their day, the elders and deacons lied about what Jesus said and done, invented false charges and acted like He was evil and brought Him to the government for the death penalty!
If this is sobering to you, it is supposed to be. It is when we have been serving God for a long time that we are tempted to rely on our judgment, rely on our knowledge, and not spend the time developing a relationship with God. How easily we can serve God with zeal and not recognize Jesus in the midst of us!
Listen to me carefully and grasp what I am saying – if you have been raised Christian, if you have been serving God for a long time, you are at risk of eating at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil rather than eating at the Tree of Life and depending fully on God. You presume you know it all, when Paul said we know in part this side of Heaven.
The tree of knowledge of good and evil brings us to a place where we miss what Jesus is doing right in front of us. Jesus knew this. He actually said that the sinners will get into the kingdom of God before the Pharisees (Matthew 21.31). What Jesus means is that it is easier for a out and out sinner to adapt to listening to God and relying on God than a religious person, because the religious person presumes they know it anyway.
You are not so smart, so experienced, so brilliant that you can rely on yourself and what you know! You can only rely on God! We have to spend time loving God and getting to know God. We have to dig into the Bible, we have to pray in tongues, we have to follow God, we have to listen to Him.
God is not a set of things you know, He is much more than that. He has a way to get you out of your current mess that you do not know yet. He is more than a million million million times smarter than you! You have to get to know Him and rely on Him!
If you do not realize how serious this information in this blog post is, consider church history. There are denominations in the United Kingdom that used to be rivers of life, flowing across our nation, obeying God fearlessly, seeing miracles, seeing salvations, seeing lives changed by the tens of thousands – and now those same denominations are now enemies of God. They oppose revival, oppose Biblical values, oppose the kingdom of God.
The power and life of the Reformation is not in most Reformed churches. The holiness and wisdom of the Methodists is not in most Methodist churches. The glory and miracles of the Pentecostals is not in most Pentecostal churches. The fire and unity of the early charismatics is not in most charismatic churches.
A few years ago, I took Tony Cooke to the John Wesley Museum in London. It is actually the house where John Wesley used to live. It is the account of the most powerful revival the UK has ever seen. It started because John Wesley, an Anglican minister, saw the Anglican church was cold and dead. Now, you can barely tell the difference between a Methodist and Anglican church. The revival that John Wesley brought to the UK is needed now – in the Methodist church.
Why? They stopped eating at the tree of life and started eating at the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they started making decisions based on what they knew they knew rather than seeking the Lord.
When people first get saved, we don’t need to tell them to rely on God fully, it’s instinctive because when you are a new Christians you know nothing. If you read it in the Bible, you do it. If God speaks it to your heart, you do it. You know you don’t know how to pray, so your prayer life is humble, dependent. You know you do not know how to read the Bible, so you read it humbly, asking God to help you.
But then just a year or two later, you feel you know everything. You have the keys to every door! You have now changed trees. You have made a deadly presumption – you can rely on you now and therefore you miss Jesus in the midst of you, and start to become a modern day Pharisee!
It is so easy to do this. Your knowledge is good – it came from walking with God but now it leads you away from God and into pride and barrenness.
You have to constantly rely on God, constantly spend time in prayer, you have to battle to renew your mind more and more. Stop relying on what you know and ask God to lead you with fresh revelations. Approach the Bible the way you used to – humbly asking God to help you and lead you. Stay intense, stay fresh, and above all stay humble.
I have seen ministers in our generation – pastors, evangelists, church planters – lean more and more on what they know, on the knowledge of good and evil – and there is no more life to them. They preach dull messages, they are lifeless and their churches are lifeless.
The best people in your churches should always be the people who have been their longest, you know them well, you trust them, you are at peace with them and they with you. But there are times when people who have been with you a long time stop relying on the Lord and start relying on the fact they have been around a long time. They are coasting, they are not seeking. They felt the church was better in the old days – but that is not the case.
They will say “This church has changed” – yes, it has, but what they failed to realize is that they should have changed too! They should have grown, and stayed close to the Lord so He could shape them and prepare them for the next phase too!
If you are reading this and feel stuck where you are – maybe you are full of knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. You can tell that you are full of it because you will despise and criticize anyone who doesn’t act according to your knowledge! You cannot get to where you are with what you know right now, you need to go to the tree of life, humble yourself before the Lord and ask Him what He is doing and learn from Him!
Perhaps it was right for you to be the only worship leader in a church, but now it is right for you to build a team. Perhaps it was right for you to be a lay pastor, but now it is right for you to get a salary. Perhaps it was right for you to be with another denomination, but now it is time to leave that group and join Tree of Life Family. Perhaps the way you spoke to your spouse was right but now it is right you speak in a kinder way, that you submit and obey their revelation.
You see what we do when we eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is we get so arrogant we actually think we can finish God’s sentences for Him. He starts to speak and we go – Oh I know this and off we go, but God is going another way and we are now in the wrong place! That’s a bad place to be. If you do not believe me, ask Samson!
Another issue that you need to know is that because so many people are eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that when you eat at the tree of life and fully rely on God and do whatever He tells you to do – many people will tell you that what you are doing is not good. Traditionalists will actually tell you that you are being evil, divisive, that you have missed God, that you are acting on ego, that you are arrogant and foolish. Do not turn away from what God has said to you in the Word and what God has told you to do for the sake of someone who isn’t even listening to God.
Really – that is the test of true obedience – will you obey God when others do not appreciate what you are doing. In the next post, I will show you how this pattern happens over and over in the Word of God – that our heroes of faith all had to do what God said in the face of a people who thought they knew what was good and what was evil.
We find out that when God made a paradise garden for Adam and Eve, He packed it with “every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food”, and that in the middle of the garden God put two trees, the Tree of Life, and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (this is all found in one verse, Genesis 2.9).
Now, in my experience as a pastor, many Christians are still eating at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and not the Tree of Life. Many Christians think these two trees were in an old garden centuries ago and have nothing to do with their lives. It was just a poisonous tree that hurt Eve and made her and Adam mortal.
No – it runs so much deeper than that. Yes, Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and then died. But the truth is that them eating from this tree has changed the entire human race.
And – listen very carefully – eating the Tree was a disobedience to what God had told them, it was taking an alternative path to the path God gave them. You have the same temptation in your life. Over and over, satan, your own flesh, and the world system on this planet, are tempting you to choose an alternative to God’s plan for your life.
When Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, she knew what was right and what was wrong; she knew what was good and what was evil. People think this information makes them a better Christian, but it makes you a worse Christian!
I know, I know, I have to explain that to you, so I will. Once you know what is good and what is evil, you now think you know everything and you think you don’t know God. Knowing the difference between good and evil doesn’t make you free, doesn’t make you know what God’s will for your life is, doesn’t protect you from choosing the wrong good, doesn’t protect you from becoming proud and arrogant. By eating the Tree, Adam and Eve disconnected themselves from God – they did not get closer to God.
When you decide that one thing is good and one thing is not good, and you do it without God, that is the worst thing possible. You cannot be guided by God while thinking you know what is good and evil. You cannot be dependent on Him.
Now, as you mature in life – you assimilate the knowledge of good and evil. If you are not careful, in your mid-late teens, or definitely in your early twenties, you have learned so many things on a soulish level about good and evil, that you think you know more than God. This is the case whether you were raised by Christians or non-Christians, this is the case whether you accepted Christ as a youngster or did not.
You then have to make a choice. You have to decide to stop living a life of evil while justifying yourself because you occasionally do some good. That is a very shallow and immature level of thinking, but because you think you know good and evil, you will get upset when the Holy Spirit tries to lead to you deeper waters. This is the moment where you decide whether to grow as a Christian and sell out for God’s plan for your life or whether to just live a mediocre, normal life just like the world.
A lot of people are fooled by the wrong tree. They do not live lives of pure evil or they would wake up and realize they went to the wrong Tree! But they live lives of some good and some evil. They go to church but criticize the preacher after. They give a little money to charity, but do not tithe to their local church. They are nice people but at the same time look down on others. They read one page of a daily reading book every other day or so, but never read or study Scripture. They sing during the worship but do not mean a word of it:
They sing “man’s empty praise and treasures that fade are never enough” – but live their lives for the praise of others.
They sing “Way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper” on Sunday, and on Monday they are terrified of their bills, of sickness, of all sorts of things that show they have no idea God is the promise keeper.
They sing “When I was broken, you were my healing, now your love is the air I’m breathing” and walk out of the church and laugh at the guest speaker for having a funny accent.
This is what the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil looks like – a bit of good and a bit of evil. It’s a total mixture of both good and evil.
That’s why it fools so many people when especially Christians eat from it. Someone lies about you, and other people say “no way they would lie, they are so so nice” – no they are eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they think they know what is right and wrong so well, they feel good to lie to you. They feel they are doing God a favour by gossiping about you. They feel that they are doing the right thing by not going to church.
They have never gone to the Tree of Life and never eaten the fruit of the Tree of Life. And so they have no life – just their own opinions of what is right and wrong, and heaven help anyone who does not fit into their opinions. I have been told I am evil for practising Biblical church discipline, for having expectations of people I platform, for living by faith, for praying for the sick, for going on TV – you name it, someone has called it evil because they eat at the wrong tree!
Once they have done a few good things, the people that eat at the wrong tree, well – they use that as a justification for any evil they have done.
I know a pastor that ran away with his mistress for a weekend and disappeared. There was a national manhunt for him (this was in Scotland) and he just turned up on Monday in the church office as if nothing had happened, and could not understand when his board fired him. He actually said to many people that he had served God for twenty years and so deserved three days to himself. That is the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It is never 100% sold out for God. After doing a few good works, it presses pause and justifies some really selfish behaviour.
I know someone else who with his fists in the air shouted at me with an unearthly anger in his voice: “I will never give a penny to your church again, I don’t tithe, I just give to better ministries” but still wanted to preach and minister in the church regularly! That’s someone who ate at the wrong tree for a long time!
Some people will be nice to their friends and therefore decide they are such a good person they don’t really need to go to church, they definitely don’t need to tithe and go to a mid-week meeting, and as for reading the Bible it’s a waste of time for someone as good as them! Someone in one of our churches told one of our pastors last week they were so spiritual they do not need to go to our summer conference. That’s the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Sadly, the same fruit of this tree is how the homosexual movement has invaded the nation. They feel because some homosexuals have done some nice things and are nice people, homosexuality is now good. It’s somehow on the good side, and because we know more than God and went to that tree – there are even churches that engage in that sort of behaviour. I know Christians who have justified rioting, destroying property and looting. That’s the wrong tree!
Eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil ends up with the person doing the eating determining what is good and what is evil for themselves. This self-appointed, self-created standard of what is good and what is evil twists the entire world, ruins the lives of many Christians and has even split churches.
Imagine being raised Christian, with Christian values with Christian parents, getting saved at a young age, and then becoming an adult that does not go to church, does not get involved with church, does not tithe, does not pray or read the Bible, is arrogant and nasty about people – how on earth can that happen. They then decide Hamas are a good group of people to support, that the LGBTQ+ philosophies are correct and celebrate a man marrying a man and celebrating that it is taught in church and even in schools to children! This happens and it happens far far too often, and is heart breaking.
They have eaten from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They think having family over Sunday morning is good and going to church would be bad. They see church really as unimportant and even silly, certainly unnecessary to their lifestyle. The Word of God is dismissed as ancient and silly stories. This is the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and it is destroying the UK right now. It has removed God from our lives and families and culture, and created a nation where most people are lost, lonely, and do not know right from wrong at all.
Imagine thinking you know more about what is right or wrong than the Word of God! That is a crazy place to be in, but I am meeting more and more people – even in church – who think that. You give them a Scripture and they say “I don’t care what the Scripture says, my favourite celebrity says… TikTok says… my cousin says…” – they would rather listen to anyone than God!
It seems to me that people who are raised Christian can easily become casual about the Word and be vulnerable to eating at the wrong tree. They exclude God from their lives by holding onto habits they know are wrong, they know are foolish, but they twist themselves up in knots justifying behaviour that is evil and selfish.
Why is it revival is often all about first generation Christians? I was at an evangelist training conference recently, and it seemed well over half the people there sharing their faith on the street were first generation Christians. I praise the Lord that my children are often on the street sharing their faith with others! But I know that often people who have grown up with God or just served Him for a long time often exclude Him from their planning, their lives, their financial decisions, their family decisions and their future decisions. That is the reality of what happens, and quite frankly, it daunts me.
This blog is my limited attempt to help you leave the tree of knowledge of good and evil behind and come and eat at Tree of Life before your mind is killed by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and you become too stupid to think. Next week we will look at the religious people in the time of Jesus who were capable of doing great evil and thinking it was good.
More than once someone has accused one of our pastors of being a gossip for telling me about a situation they were facing. In one situation, it later turned out three people had got together, talked about the pastor behind their back, and decided they were a gossip. I thought maybe I should call the irony police on that one! I then found out the piece of information that they accused the pastor of saying wasn’t true and the pastor did not even say it. But apart from that!
We need to discuss from a Biblical point of view what gossip is and what gossip is not.
The truth is that when a pastor or elder tells someone who is over them about a pastoral situation, it is not gossip, and we need to stop falsely labelling it as such. Let’s go to the Word and find out!
In 1 Corinthians 1.10 to 11, Paul tells the Corinthians about a conversation he had with “Chloe’s people”.
10 I appeal to you, brothers by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. 11 For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers.
Chloe is either an elder or pastor in Corinth, and concerned about the fact that certain people in the church are quarrelling. The Greek word for quarreling is eris, and it means people who are non-stop arguing, often just arguing for the sake of arguing, and making a big deal of minor matters. The Corinthian church was a very immature and worldly church, and arguing about minor things is a very worldly behaviour (see Romans 1.29, and 1 Cor. 3.3 where the same Greek word is used), and to see the Christians in the church arguing and fighting and opening the door to the devil concerned her so much that she contacted Paul and told him.
Notice that Paul as the apostle who started the church does not rebuke Chloe for gossip. He does not say “don’t tell me what is going on, that’s gossip, don’t discuss these things with me” – rather Paul listens carefully to the pastor and responds with a letter. I do the same when pastors of churches that I have planted come to me with issues that are going on in their churches. Our touchline is the Bible.
The Bible defines gossip as revealing secrets (Proverbs 11.13), causing quarrels (Proverbs 26.20) and indulging in delicious morsels (Proverbs 26.22). When someone finds out someone in the church is doing something they should not be, and starts telling others to cause scandal, to create some drama and to enjoy being the chef of dishing the dirt, then that is gossip. Some people live boring lives and they entertain themselves by little snacks of stories of other people’s lives!
But when Chloe told Paul about the quarrelling and strife in the church, Chloe was not a gossip at all, she was a leader in the church looking for wisdom and help and sharing a problem not with someone who used to go to the church and now hates it and cannot wait to hear problems about it, but with the individual who started the church and had more experience in ministry than her, and could help her.
She was not doing it to cause a quarrel – she was doing it to stop a quarrel. She was not doing it because she wanted a tasty morsel. As a spiritual leader, she loved and cared for the people that Jesus Christ entrusted to her, and wanted the best wisdom for caring for them. That is not gossip or Paul would have rebuked Chloe.
Gossip really is the opposite of the gospel: it’s bad news. The gospel is good news about grace, the gossip is bad news about sin. It is talking about sin for the sake of talking about sin, for the sake of tantalizing and judging and demeaning people. There was a time that David was sick, and people started sharing the story that he was going to die soon (Psalm 41.5-8). They did not go to the prophet or priest with concern, they were secretly celebrating. That’s gossip!
Later on, we find out Chloe told Paul as well that some people in the church were engaged in sexual immorality, having sex before they were married (1 Cor. 5.1). Again, we do not see Paul rebuking Chloe for gossip because Chloe is not a gossip, she is going Paul to help rescue people from their ungodly lifestyle. That’s not gossip! When a pastor speaks to another pastor about a situation someone in the church is going through to get help, wisdom and advice that is never gossip.
I have been accused of gossip recently about a situation, but I only ever spoke to pastors who have been pastors longer than me trying to get some wisdom in a situation that I had never been in before. Meanwhile, the people accusing me of gossip were making videos to the general public containing nasty lies about me that anyone could watch. One of those things is gossip, the other is not. It’s that simple.
The problem with gossip is that it is sneaky. It is sly and furtive. It is done out of arrogance (Psalm 101.5).
The Hebrew word for gossip can be translated to whisper, and often gossips lower their voices because in their heart they know that their words are wrong and should not be overheard. When pastors have come to me about a certain person’s problems, whether it be their quarreling nature, their sexual immorality, or any other problem, they never look around, they never lower their voice because in the spirit they know that it is not gossip, and it is not.
To suggest that when one of my pastors tells me about a situation in the church is gossip is as dumb as suggesting that when I saw a car accident while walking to the corner shop a few years ago I was a gossip when I told the police what I saw happen because the driver was no longer around! Think about it!
Another part of pastoring that many people are not aware of, generally because of the very low level of Bible reading that so many Christians engage in, is that a good pastor is supposed to warn people if there is someone dangerous around.
While writing to Timothy, Paul says to him:
Alexander the coppersmith did me great harm; the Lord will repay him according to his deeds. Beware of him yourself, for he strongly opposed our message (2 Tim. 4.14-15 ESV)
Do you think Paul is a gossip for saying this to Timothy? Do you think the Holy Spirit took the sin of gossip and inspired it to be in the Bible? I mean seriously think about this. When I have a pastors meeting and I say “Such and such has left the church, but be aware, before he left, he raised his fists to me, he lied, he said how much he hated me, he said this and that about the church and opposed our message” – that is not gossip. That is good pastoring. That is helping people protect their flock.
I understand that people who are argumentative, immature, mistreating their children, sexual predators, liars and doing the church great harm would rather that the pastoral team did not talk about them. They would rather continuing in their sin, they would rather their lies are not challenged, the would rather they could keep doing the church harm and feed their hatred. I would imagine Alexander would not be happy that Paul told Timothy about how harmful his behaviour was.
Maybe when Alexander turned up at the church in Ephesus and asked if he could share a word, or lead worship, or whatever, that Timothy said well actually Paul told me you did him harm and I am not interesting in platforming you. I am sure Alexander would start telling people (behind Paul and Timothy’s back mind you) that Paul and Timothy are nasty, little, gossips when actually they are being good pastors and protecting the flock! Alexander would have been talking about of revenge and backstabbing, while Paul and Timothy are trying to love and protect the flock.
And this was not the only time Paul did this. In 1 Timothy 1.18-20, Paul tells Timothy to deal with false teachings and he names Hymenaeus and Alexander as false teachers. If in a pastor’s meeting, I say can we please not promote such and such a preacher, or can such and such in Church A be told to stop bringing his books to church and passing them around, that is not gossip, that is good pastoring in the style of Paul. What’s shocking is that when people talk about that pastoral decision behind the pastor’s backs and then decide the pastors are gossips.
When someone comes to me with a problem, I have learned over the years, especially when I was a youth pastor, to never promise confidentiality. I rather say something like “I am not a gossip, and I won’t be sharing this publicly, but if you tell me a problem, I may share it with one or two pastors to get some wisdom and advice on how to deal with it, and in some situations I might legally have to contact the police or social services, if you still want to tell me, please do”.
The question I asked last Sunday in Dagenham when preaching is how do we build a culture of love. Chloe asking Paul how to respond to people in the church living together and not being married is birthed out of love, the desire is to leave drama behind and lead the church to still waters and green pastures.
Someone telling someone else that they heard this and heard that, especially when you know the person is disgruntled and you are feeding that negative, ungodly attitude, especially when you know the person is like Alexander the coppersmith and want to harm the church and want to cause disruption and oppose the message of grace and peace!
John for many years was involved in the church at Ephesus, and for a season it seems he was the pastor of the church, He wrote to the church in 3 John and says the following:
9 I wrote to the church about this, but Diotrephes, who loves to be the leader, refuses to have anything to do with us. 10 When I come, I will report some of the things he is doing and the evil accusations he is making against us. Not only does he refuse to welcome the traveling teachers, he also tells others not to help them. And when they do help, he puts them out of the church.
11 Dear friend, don’t let this bad example influence you. Follow only what is good. Remember that those who do good prove that they are God’s children, and those who do evil prove that they do not know God
John tells the entire church that Diotrephes:
Loves to be the leader (literally in the Greek, the word means loves to be in the first place or up the front, in a special place).
Refuses to have anything to do with us
Is making evil accusations against us
Refuses to welcome travelling preachers
Tells others not to help them
John did not consider revealing these things to be gossip. Funnily enough (though it was not funny at the time) I had to tell all the pastors about someone who loved to have pre-eminence, and in fact point blank refused to go to any meeting they were not at the front for and ministering in. I had to let them know the person refused to have anything to do with us, even though we reached out in love. We had to explain how badly they treated some of our travelling guest preachers and that they were constantly bad-mouthing those preachers to others in the church! And guess what – none of that was gossip – it was helping our pastors understand how to pastor, how to set a good example, how to live for Christ.
Read all of 3 John, John mentioned Diotrephes’ behaviour to explain how to live for Christ, Not gossip, but great pastoring from one of the original twelve apostles, the man whose head was on the chest of Jesus.
If the Alexanders and Diotrephes and Hymenaeus’ of this world can convince you that your pastors are talking about you behind your back and gossiping about you, then either you will hide your sin and harden your heart, or even change churches. You wouldn’t have changed churches because of the leading of the Lord, but because you borrowed offense from people who are trying to harm a church! It’s that simple.
I make no apologies about being clear and upfront about this. I make no apologies about consulting with my team of pastors in seeking to help people and also warn others about dangerous people. When plague broke out in London in the 17th century, people did not say “well, there is a deadly infectious plague out there that will cause great harm to people but we won’t mention it because we would hate to upset someone and be called a gossip” – no they painted giant red Xs on people’s houses to show that house was one to stay well away from.
I make no apology when I am painting a red X on someone and telling our other pastors and leaders about them because I want a plague free church, I want a gossip free church, I want a church full of the Word, full of the Spirit, full of the nations and full of love. I want all of us to walk in victory and peace, and sometimes the only way to do that is to talk about certain situations.
Romans 16.17 actually tells us to mark those who cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine you have learned and avoid them. The verse is written to “brethren”, not just leaders. All of us have a responsibility to speak to leadership when people are truly gossiping about a situation in church, or dishonouring the leadership by talking dirt about them. And all of us have to realize that when leaders are discussing pastoral situations or warning people about dangerous people, that is not and has never been gossip. It is good pastoring.
Jesus Himself told the church at Ephesus to avoid the Nicolaitans. They were a cult built around Nicholas who used to be a deacon in the church, and wanted to build a new religion of Christianity, Judaism and Roman paganism all mixed up.
We have a great team of pastors in the Tree of Life, we have certainly all been gossiped about, lied about and had people wish us great harm. All good pastors end up with an Alexander or two. But what I would ask all of you to consider is what is the fruit.
Paul wrote half of the New Testament, planted churches all over Europe and Asia, wherever he preached there were salvations and healings. He kept a pure heart during so much persecution. Alexander just did harm to people.
There are people who don’t even go to church, and people are listening to them like they are spiritual leaders. There are people whose children are not living for God and people are listening to them like they are spiritual leaders. There are people who cause drama wherever they go and people think they are someone worth listening to. Meanwhile our pastors are growing people, growing churches, seeing healings and miracles. By the fruit you shall know them! Of course we want them to repent and be restored, of course we want to see people on fire for God, but until that happens, we must not platform people – either in the church or in our hearts.
If you are in Tree of Life, I can assure you that your pastors are not gossips. I know that, I am in all the pastor’s meetings. I am not a gossip, Amanda is not a gossip, none of our pastor’s are gossips. Maybe you were talking about one of us behind our back and decided we were a gossip but now think about that one, in the light of the Bible. We do not listen to gossip about each other, and if people will not stop gossiping, we will stand them down.
Guard your heart against gossip. If someone is feeding you tasty morsels of gossip, let them know you are fasting negative words about others. Stand up to them, and if they keep gossiping, do what the Bible says and have nothing to do with them, especially if they are not interested in growing spiritually or walking with God, no matter how nice they seem. Pray for yourself, pray for your spiritual leaders, and do not let strife into the local church.
I am not talking about witch hunts, I am talking about building a church community free from strife and full of love, and to do that we are all drafted. I’m on a mission here – a mission to build a family of churches with a culture full of love, without any gossip, encouraging and edifying each other, changing the world with the truth of the Word and the power of the Spirit. Join us and our wonderful team of pastors!
Why would someone get up early on a Monday morning, get on a train packed to the gills with some really smelly people, travel an hour or more, go into an office and do a series of tasks under pressure? The reason is money. We all need money to live and survive in this world. And we all understand that money is normally earned. We go to school to learn and then we go to work.
Most people are making money by hard work, long hours and unpleasant circumstances. And the Bible is clear we should work, that is vital. But there is another way to make money – and it is so important to prosperity, and it is serving the Lord.
Psalm 35.27 says that the Lord has pleasure in the prosperity of HIS SERVANT. As we serve the Lord, the Lord delights in us prospering. The Lord delights in us having stuff. That means God has fun bringing stuff to you and inventing ways to making you rich!
Job 36.11-12 tells us that “if we obey and serve [the LORD], we will spend our days prospering”. When you serve the Lord, you should definitely prosper.
If you are not serving the Lord, not involved in local church, not on a rota, it’s time to start serving. If you are, it’s time to start expecting prosperity.
One of the greatest things about serving the Lord is that those who hate you will be ashamed. I am by no means an old man, but I have certainly in my life had some people who were furious at me and hated me. There are people who want me to fail. There are people who lie about me, there are people who are texting people in our churches telling them lies about, there are people who have recorded videos and put them on social media lying about me, there are people who have tried to destroy what I am doing.
When that happens, I run to the Word. A great Scripture in these times is Isaiah 41:8-14:
“But as for you, Israel my servant, Jacob my chosen one, descended from Abraham my friend, 9 I have called you back from the ends of the earth, saying, ‘You are my servant.’ For I have chosen you and will not throw you away. 10 Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.
11 “See, all your angry enemies lie there, confused and humiliated. Anyone who opposes you will die and come to nothing. 12 You will look in vain for those who tried to conquer you. Those who attack you will come to nothing. 13 For I hold you by your right hand— I, the Lord your God. And I say to you, ‘Don’t be afraid. I am here to help you.
Notice it is being a servant that leads you to the place where your angry enemies lie confused and humiliated. If you serve God, God Himself will take care of your angry enemies.
Your job is to love and lift your enemies, let God take care of them.
It has been said to me over and over again last week that the praise and worship at Heal the Nations last week was better than it has ever been, and I absolutely agree. There was a real sense of joy at all the Tree churches worshipping together and investing in each other. It was beautiful. It was great to see the email teaching I did on glory in March bearing so much fruit.
One of the most glorious moments in the praise and worship was on Friday night. God gave me a prophetic word and afterwards I told the musicians to change the song order. With nothing more than a whispered sentence, they changed it and as they followed what I said the glory of God filled the room, many were set free. It was a beautiful moment!
This is what so many do not realize – true worship is not about the song, it’s not about doing your thing, it’s about learning to follow. You can never effectively lead if you cannot learn how to follow. Now in our churches, we insist all those who lead worship also have to play at other times to support other leaders. Some are better than others, but it is a skill (and character) everyone can develop – followship. Really how you grow as a Christian in any area of your life depends on your followship. This matters so much. If you cannot follow you will never get where you are going!
Order brings glory, and we need to be in the right place to see the glory of the Lord. If you missed Heal the Nations, you should be taking the time to watch the videos and catch some of the fire that this conference had.
No one is so spiritual or so deep they can do without listening to the Word of God. If you are part of Tree of Life Church, this conference is your conference. Every speaker was preaching to you, every prayer was for you, every word of knowledge was for you. Even the worship was for you to worship God with and to usher you into His presence. God didn’t send you to Tree of Life to have you fed by another conference – watch it and find out this is indeed your conference. I believe it will totally change your life forever.
O Lord, I am your servant; yes, I am your servant, born into your household; you have freed me from my chains.
It wasn’t until David started serving God that He found true freedom. We have a strange view of freedom in the modern age. Recently, several people have told me they will not be at church on Sunday because “it is their birthday”. I find that crazy that your birthday present to yourself is to skip church and skip serving and assembling with the people of God. I know people who skip church to meet family, to tile their bathroom, and if you ever speak to them about it, the answer normally includes the word “free” or “freedom” – “I’m free to do whatever I want”. That’s not freedom. Paul taught the Galatian church about grace, and they became a church full of grace, but they then began to use their freedom to serve the flesh. Paul had to write to them and say that is not freedom! Galatians 5.13 says “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another”.
In one sense, yes you are free to skip church and go and have some birthday cake. You are free to skip church and wash your car, you are free to skip serving and go and watch the football. You are free to get offended at the pastor and not go to church and stay at home and sulk. You are even free to text people how much you hate church. You are free to go on YouTube and make a silly video telling silly lies about the church! You are in one sense very free. But here is the issue that most people do not realize until it is too late – that kind of freedom will always lead to being trapped.
Once, one of my sons fell down the stairs and bite his lips so severely he bit all the way through it. My wonderful wife, Amanda, and myself laid hands on him and prayed in tongues for 45 minutes until his lips was totally and completely healed by God. Why was I free to do that? Because I have used my “free” time for many years to pray in tongues and develop faith in the Word.
Maybe that illustration is too spiritual for you. Ok, here is a natural illustration. After this blog post, I am going to go to my local gym, I am going to put 120kg on the bar and I am going to bench 120kg. Why am I free to do that? Most people cannot do that. Because I have used my freedom to do it over and over and over and over and over and over until I am strong enough to do it with heavy weights.
You are supposed to use your freedom to discipine yourself. Let’s say you skipped church for your birthday, and God wanted to speak to you during the worship to pray a little more in the week, you missed it, so you didn’t pray more, so your heart wasn’t sensitive for a situation and you lost your temper and ruined your witness. You were not free to keep your cool in a tough time because you did not use your freedom to go to church and hear God, you did not use your free time to pray, rather you were playing computer games and watching rubbish in TV, so you get chained up. You wake up sick and cannot rebuke the sickness because you did not use your freedom to serve and be in the Word and love.
True freedom is found in discipline. It is found in obedience. It is found in serving. The more we serve others, the more our heart blossoms, the more we find freedom, the more we win in life.
I do not have a more powerful way of saying this than Paul did in Galatians 5.13, so here it is again, in several versions:
For you, brethren, were [indeed] called to freedom; only [do not let your] freedom be an incentive to your flesh and an opportunity or excuse [for selfishness], but through love you should serve one another. (AMPC)
It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. (MSG)
For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. (NLT)
For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. (NRSV)
Brothers and sisters, God has called you to freedom! Hear the call, and do not spoil this gift by using your liberty to engage in what your flesh desires; instead, use it to serve each other as Jesus taught through love. (VOICE)
Serving is indeed awesome, it is the path to freedom. True freedom!
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